rather than Christmas. I have not bought a paper book since, and now find myself rather wondering what to do about the pile of paper books by my bed. My GLW is insistant that for her there is no going back and she has bought her last book. I'm not quite so certain, but the majority of my purchases are likely to be electronic from her on in.

I travel a lot for work, so this means I can carry a pile of books without the weight and also without guilt-tripping myself into not abandoning books when I'm away. If I take them back home, I can pass them on to someone.

I still buy some actual books - but much fewer than I did before.

It is very good for carrying things that I like to dip in to, like poetry collections - I've got several of them and that is very relaxing for a ten minute riffle and read.

If you are thinking of getting one, it is worth using the information kindly provided by The Massive here :

http://wordmagazine.co.uk/content/atm-what-should-i-put-my-kindle

Not got a Kindle as such but use the Kindle App on the iPad. Like Paul above I've not bought a paper book for ages and am quite happy about it. This came as quite a surprise to me as I am currently sitting in a room fully lined with bookshelves packed with years of purchases.

On the other hand my music listening is almost exclusively done from the computer these days and my CDs and vinyl are sitting around dusty and neglected so perhaps I should have realised what would happen.

I got one last Xmas and since then have purchased 2 physical books, one (S J Perelman) because it isn't available for Kindle and one because it's a book of photos. It's eminently readable, highly convenient, go anywhere, good battery life and reliable. I love it.

The only drawbacks are: it does away with passing books between friends so if you buy a trashy "paperback" for the beach, you can't even leave it in the hotel for the next person; and you have to watch the pricing because many books are not as cheap as you might wish.

Like the above I haven't bought a physical book since I got my Kindle a couple of months ago. The convenience of carrying a ton of books is completely liberating and means that I am reading a lot more.

But if you do get one, get Calibre. Downloading the Guardian, BBC News and The New Yorker to read in the morning is a joy.

Even the Web Browser is usable if a bit clunky, Kindlemap is really good as a faux sat-nav.

My advice is GET ONE!

I have about 50 books on my kindle that I have read. I also purchase some physical books -mostly poetry. Due to a lack of space at home the kindle has been very useful. Also useful is the leather case with the incorporated light which I use a lot . I have had a kindle since September 2010 , I will continue to read through both mediums. I think that maybe the arrival of the e reader will mean that publishers will take more care in the presentation of books - the Julian Barnes and Carol Ann Duffy books are two good examples.

You can read books that you would otherwise be too embarrassed to read in public.

I have had a Sony Reader for a bit more than a year and its great but the software is a nightmare and I wouldn't trust it with managing DRM so I have limited myself to free classics.

With a Kindle I would feel more confident about buying books I think.

I recently used the Kindle app on an iPad and, while this is useful, I find the screen on the Kindle itself a far superior reading experience.

Only downside is that, once you've set up your account with Amazon, it's frighteningly easy to buy stuff! This is especially worrying for me as I've recently got into Lee Child's fantastically gripping Jack Reacher novels. Just starting number three. Of sixteen...

And it's very good. Still buying physical books as well, but mostly remaindered stuff that isn't as cheap as Kindle books. What I've noticed is that the back catalogues are now starting to appear, so as well as all the Sharpe novels, there's now all the Flashman books, all the Jack Aubrey/Steven Maturin canon, and Ian M Banks SF output as well. This is potentially very heavy on the wallet.

...nope, can't do it.

The Kindle is great. Perfect for holidays, perfect for impulse buys, perfect for 'disguising' what you're reading. Not that I would ever read anything inappropriate or embarrassing. Oh no.

Still buy paperbacks, but less so. But buying more overall. And reading more too.

Of all the things I use my iPad for (which in itself is a shortening list), the Kindle / iBooks bit is now the very least. It's not the reading experience - that's fine. There's tons that's cool about it. It's absolutely the future, and I'm as much of a gadget-lover as the next man. And that's entirely leaving aside my Apple fanboy tendencies and my absolute awe at the magnificence of Amazon's business.

It's just I love books. I am to books what vinyl freaks are to music. I love their smell. I love their simplicity. I love the fact that a room full of crammed bookshelves needs no further decoration. They're beautiful, which is something an eBook can never be. They're your friend in a way an eBook can never be. There's a warmth and a humanity to a book that a screen can't match.

Books were the love of my life long before records came along. I can't abandon them. I'm a huge, old-fashioned romantic about them. You can have my books when you pry them from my cold dead hands.

Actually, no you can't. Because I'm leaving them to my daughters.

The only thing I miss is not being able to pass a book on. All in all it's a lot better for travelling and you don't clog the house up with books that you will probably never read again. I'm thinking of buying the FPO one for Xmas.

I'm surprised at how quickly I got used to it. I still buy other books, however, because many just don't fit with the Kindle experience. For example, the 'Endless Trip' and 'Galactic Ramble' music compendiums.
I'm not sure I read any more than I did before overall but reading books in bed ( especially large ones ) is a lot easier. Also works outside in the summer - very easy to read.
I might be tempted by the Kindle Fire, though, when it is released in the UK.

I love it. I have the case with he built in light and its perfect for when I can't sleep and my wife can. Have just bought her a one of the newer smaller ones and she seems pretty hooked as well. They are set up on the same account so we share books on them. She is ignoring the football and music ones though....

Having tried my brother in laws Kindle we then looked at the Kobo Touch e-readers. They're a much nicer tactile experience and having spent some time filling them up (before re-boxing them ready to open on Christmas Day) they look like they'll be great.

Must say though, the programming on the Kobo bookstore is nowhere near as good or user friendly as Amazon's Kindle store. Hopefully that will improve with time. I'm not sure if it has quite the range that Amazon has but that said I found lots of nice free books as well as a number of bought items too. Ranging across obscure Edgar Rice Burroughs John Carter novels, Sherlock Holmes, Shakespeare, poetry anthologies, reference works, Wells and Verne, some study Bibles in various translations, a couple of best-sellers etc etc etc.

Looking forward to playing with it on Christmas Day...

I am really not sure about them. I don't like the idea of my reading experience being mediated by Amazon, for one thing, and the whole locked in ecosystem idea is horrible. Plus, they look plastic, cheap and nasty, and frankly I don't think the technology is all that - the page turn action takes an age and I really don't see how it doesn't drive anyone who can read above a remedial level mad.

But don't take my word for it, listen to the Greatest Living Englishman* instead:

So do you not have a Kindle?
I’ve got very little connection to technology at all. I’m pretty Amish in most of my approach to technology. Anything after the horse and buggy, I’m a bit suspicious of. I can see that for some people having a Kindle would be a real benefit. I can also see the state of my home, which is pretty much surrendered to books. Me and Melinda, we make our living space around the books. But I kind of like that. I wouldn’t prefer in a million years to have all of them – and I’m pretty sure I couldn’t have all of them – downloaded on a Kindle. Because they’ve got an artefact value. I’ve got first editions that have got beautiful illustrations or are signed; it’s all part of the mystique of books to me. Perhaps people would argue that that’s not necessarily relevant, but I think our emotional attachment to an object is a part of all this.
Like I say, I’m not against electronic books per se. I don’t think they’re the downfall of civilisation or the end of literacy. I just tend to have quite a lot of faith in the book itself as the publishing world equivalent of a shark. Sharks have not evolved in millions and millions of years simply because they haven’t had to. They were pretty much perfect to start with. And I feel the same way about books. I doubt that published books are going to go anywhere any time soon.
I can see that the people actually producing technology, such as Kindle and iPad, these are always the people who are telling us that we have to have these things. And being the type of creatures that we are, a fair number of us will naturally fall into that, will perhaps assume that as a status symbol it’s much better to be seen reading a Kindle than a dog-eared paperback. Although I will note that the last two or three times I’ve taken train journeys, everybody around me was sitting round reading a dog-eared paperback. I tend to think that for most people the idea of the book, with its easy portability, where you can turn the corner of a page down, where you are basically working with ordinary, reflected light rather than screen radiance, I think that the book will end up as the reading method of choice.

*No, not sodding Stephen Fry

I had virtually stopped reading books before I got the Kindle, as my reading time had contracted with kids, work etc. I've read almost 100 books in the last 18 months with the Kindle. The only print books I'll be buying are those not suited to the Kindle's format (cookbooks, guitar books etc).

I have four kindles registered to my account: mine, my partner's, my Dad's and my brother's. We all have access to the one big library and can read books simultaneously. They just pop some bucks in my account if they make a purchase.

We were rearranging furniture on the weekend and I cleared all paperbacks out of our swollen shelves and put them in storage. If it's not on the Kindle I won't read it. It made me think of the tens of thousands I have spent on books over the last 20 years, and that I no longer have probably 30-50% of these books due to damage (two floods), loans, theft etc. With the Kindle, I own access rights to my purchases forever.

I love mine.

It's increased my reading habits significantly - I'm sitting here having read 75 books thus far in 2011, and with a bit of effort I might manage 80 (and, yes, sad bugger that I am, I've kept a list...).

Can't sing the praises of the Kindle highly enough.

That said, I'm on my third in the 12 months since I bought it - Kindle 1 and Kindle 2 both developed hairline cracks in the plastic from the bottom right hand corner of the display. Kindle 3 I've only had for a month now but I hate to say that I'm almost expecting it to go the same way. None of the previous Kindles suffered from these cracks, but Amazon were very good at replacing...

My Kindle seems to have become a compact newspaper.

I've subscribed to the Guardian and since then I've found it's all I read on my way to and from work. There's just not enough time for anything else. I have a real book beside the bed (Sebastian Faulk's December) so I haven't read a book on KIndle for a couple of months.

I have to heap praise upon them for their replacement policy. My first Kindle packed up. When I switched it on it started opening then stopped. I had half a screen of text and half a screen of ragged black and white lines. This was on a Sunday. I rang Amazon when I got home. There was no argument and I received the replacement on the Tuesday following. I had a bit of hassle with the courier company who were supposed to pick up the old one and in the end I was advised to send it back via Royal Mail recorded delivery. They said they'd refund the postage and I've just remembered I've not chased them up. That's my fault not theirs. So doffed cap to Amazon.

I think a certain Iberian-based blogger (who's sadly not around here as much as he once was) pretty much nailed it over a year ago...

http://www.wordmagazine.co.uk/content/all-things-must-pass#comment-32968...

Apart from the art and photography books and other objets d'avaflickthroughthis, I don't think I'd miss them if they weren't there. (The Kindle has space for over twice as many.) Will my life really be any the poorer when there are nice pictures on the walls instead of rows of spines of Rough Guides to Places I'll Never Go Back To and early James Ellroy potboilers?

I've no need for a Kindle itself. I don't see the point in buying one of these gadgets to do one thing anymore (see also digital cameras / mp3 players) when we're now heading towards the "everything box" idea. I do use the Kindle application on my Sony Xperia (smartphone) though, but I've found it's often easier to grab "books" from other sites (Project Gutenberg is good) and use them on a similar application called Aldiko. I'm working my way through all the Sherlock Holmes stories on it.

(Actually, my answer would be "get one, they are ace"), here's a review of the Kindle Fire, in case anyone's interested. I wrote it for a buddy in the UK, so excuse conversational tone...

Hmm. It's ...OK... Firstly, it's basically a window to Amazon - you want their content, you've got it - one click and it's yours. I also have Prime so I can get a bunch of free TV shows and films streamed to it. It does this *very* well.

It's not a great e-reader - I mean it's fine, but my old style Kindle e-ink reader is easier on the eyes, no question. It handles pictures better, though, naturally.

Hardware-wise, I've found it to be pretty snappy, but the built-in speakers aren't great, and there's no HDMI out, so no way to stream content to your TV - even my phone can do that!. I could care less about the absense of a camera, and the screen is very good - hi res and very sharp. The touch element of it is often frustrating, it's hard to do accurate cursor positioning, and the lack of Swipe drives me mad. I'd rather do email on my phone.

The web browser is fine, no issues there. I can't seem to route to my local webserver to control my squeezeboxes - I think all requests are sent to the cloud to be rendered by Silk. (editor's note - I've since figured this out and it can be done)

Music handling is fine if you have decent speakers connected...My MP3s are in the cloud (I accidentally uploaded 20,000 to Google Music at work! Installed the software - it didn't work, so forgot about it. Checked recently, and there they all were. Work has now banned all outbound traffic apart from port 21, 80 and 443, and I can't help but wonder if...)

Ergonomically, it's light and pretty easy to hold, though can be quite slippy.

I can side-load files, but haven't managed to make anything play from my media server on it yet. You are limited to the Amazon marketplace for apps, rather than Google Marketplace, and it's a bit sparse at the moment

The one thing I wanted to do, read PDFs, was horrible with the built-in PDF browser, but a third party one was much better.

Two other irritating quirks - the only button (on/off/sleep) is located on the bottom, and I've accidentally sent it to sleep a couple of times. Also, the carousel browser is stupidly awkward and often selects the wrong things.

Oil give it foive...

I've loved my Kindle since the moment I got for Xmas last year. PIt's prfect for travelling, and for carrying multiple books at once. It's permanently in the bag I always have cover my shoulder; well, other than when I'm actually reading it.

I loved the way that when I got an iPad for my birthday (yes, it's been a great year for gadgets!), it was moments' work to install the free Kindle app and "restore" all the books I'd bought. It will keep my "open page" in sync on both devices. (I've done the same on the PC, so I have two backup copies of every book.) I prefer the home page on the app to that of the Kindle itself, since it's a set of front covers rather than just a list of titles.

Technical books are often better on the app than on the device because the illustrations are larger, at higher res, and in colour.

When Peter Doggett was on the Word podcast, I was able to have a copy of You Never Give Me Your Money in my hands, on my Kindle, within minutes.

I sing the praises of the Kindle as someone who still loves the physical book, and believes a set of bookshelves the best way to decorate a wall. I still buy physical books (especially in support of independent bookshops), but usually as a second choice.

It's much easier to carry around than a paperback, it's much better on your eyes (that's THE major plus for me, personally) and I'd say you even learn to read more quickly on a Kindle; not really sure why that should be, but I find myself racing through novels on the Kindle.

So, Yes x 101

is probably the ones that niggles me the most. However, if any Kindle owner could lend a book to any other Kindle owner in the world, this would effectively be the same as file-sharing.

I don't know what the answer is to this. Maybe the ability to transfer a book to another friend on the same wi-fi network? Something that limits your transfer in a way that's akin to a physical exchange?

Perfect for killing time on the road, and paperbacks I don't want cluttering up the bookshelves. The ability to download sample chapters is excellent, as is the availability of collected classics for pennies. The pros far outweigh the cons, e.g. literals, occasional formatting issues. It'll never supplant the desire to collect physical versions of books by favourite authors, though.

Are available for US users - I imagine this will be broadened out to UK etc relatively soon...

http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=200549320

I love books but have simply run out of space. The kindle is very easy on the eye. Browsing through Project Gugenheim or similar sites, is like being set loose in a huge second-hand bookshop. Except that you don't need dry stane dyke building skills to fit your purchases on your already full shelves.